Girls with long hair
by Sarsaparilla
Summary: Ino and Sakura talk three months after Team 7 is torn apart by Sasuke's leaving. Did Sasuke ever really like girls with long hair? SasukeNaruto speculation, I suppose.


Oneshot. I don't own Naruto, but you probably don't either.

**Girls With Long Hair**

It was so quiet. Too quiet for ears that had grown so accustom to an annoyingly loud voice that made annoyingly loud vows to anyone that would listen, that would shout out equally annoying challenges to a rival that never seemed to care. Yes, Haruno Sakura decided, too quiet. Not only there, in the very place she used to meet the rest of Team 7, but throughout Konoha. For her, it was a village whose colours had dimmed; time in such a place stretched out horribly. Seconds, hours...Days faded into days faded into days, and it was all Sakura could do to remind herself that it had only been three months.

Her pink head shook slowly as she took in the combination of pain, pride, and comfort that the bridge offered her. Three months. It shouldn't have seemed so long. She was Tsunade-sama's apprentice - this should have been the most exciting time of her life!

Sometimes, when she forgot about Sasuke and Naruto for a while, it was. Exciting, that is. None of it ever seemed good.

For her, memories had become her monsters, and she tried her hardest to shake them. Like Gaara, she feared being eaten in her sleep, and so she rarely slept. Nightmares, every once in a while, followed her well into her day-dreams, but they weren't as bad when the sun was up.

The young shinobi pulled her lips into a small smile. It was only for a while. Naruto would come back, stronger from training with Jiraiya, and he'd make good with his promise, because he was too Naruto-ish not to, because it was "his ninja way". He'd bring Sasuke back, and then they'd all be together again...

Sakura acknowledged Ino with nothing more than a weak smirk when she joined her on the bridge. They were rivals, after all, and rivals had to keep up appearances. The blonde-haired girl sent a smart smile back and leaned on the bridge's railing.

"So, ho long are you planning to act like this?"

Sakura barely managed a "huh"; it was a bad day.

"How long are you going to act like you're the only one who cares about him?"

"Them," she corrected.

Ino shrugged with a laziness she couldn't have managed without having spent so much time around Shikamaru. "Him, them," she shrugged again. "Whoever."

Her surroundings dragged her through the giant mud-puddle that was Sakura's Nostalgia. "Them," she repeated.

The silence between them was so absolute that anyone who knew them would have been completely disbelieving of it. Instead of immediately going for each other's throats, the girls stood calmly next to each other. Sakura smiled. Nothing was very normal anymore; she was getting stronger without her team, and the rest of her team was getting stronger without her and without each other.

"Do you think it was true?" Ino broke the silence.

"Try being a little more specific, Ino-pig."

She snorted without much conviction. "Do you think that Sasuke-kun really does like girls with long hair?"

Sakura felt a smirk tug at her lips again. "I guess. I don't know."

"I don't think he does."

"Why not?"

Ino stared up at the remarkably blue sky. "He never noticed anybody, let alone girls with long hair. He never noticed me," she paused, then continued, "Or you. Not really."

The pink-haired shinobi didn't feel like arguing the truth right then. It was a bad day. But she did have something to add. "Naruto. He noticed Naruto."

"Did he? I never really noticed." The girl took a moment to chuckle quietly at the irony. "Why him?"

"I don't know," she sighed. The longer she'd pursued Sasuke, the longer she'd tried to understand him and tried to convince both herself and Ino that she knew him best, the more she'd come to realize how little she really did know him. "I don't know."

"I guess they were pretty close, hey?"

"I guess. Yeah. Yeah, they were. Closer to each other than either of them were to me," she admitted.

"I wonder," Ino began with a giggle, disturbing the silence every time it tried to settle over them. "I wonder if Naruto knows."

"More specific, Ino."

"I wonder if Naruto knows whether or not Sasuke-kun likes girls with long hair."

Accidentally, Sakura let out a snort of laughter. The image of an over-excited, hyper-active Naruto trying to discuss girls and long hair with a sullen Sasuke was pretty great. Her right hand reached up to tug at her shorter hair absent-mindedly. "Ino-pig."

"What, big-forehead?"

"I wish it could have been me."

"Sakura. Little vague, there."

The girl faced her childhood friend. "Sometimes I wish I could have been Sasuke's best friend. Sometimes I wish Naruto wasn't the only one with a chance at bringing him back." A tear leaked out of one eye and Sakura turned her face away. "I wish it could have been me."

Ino smiled. "I know. So do I."

It was quiet for a while, and the Team 7 member was listening to the faint sounds of Konoha during the day when the other turned to leave.

"I think, Sakura-chan," she said, ignoring the surprise on Sakura's face, "That we've both lost to one person that we never expected to be competing against in the first place. So, if Sasuke-kun isn't ours to fight over, never even was ours to begin with, I'm not going to fight you for him anymore."

"Ino..."

"Don't be so sulky, and _don't _think I'll forget our rivalry, but,"she shrugged again. "I don't think it's worth taking it as seriously as we used to."


End file.
